In conventional techniques for providing content over a computer network, such as the public internet, a uniform resource locator (URL) may be provided which identifies a location of associated content on the network, so that the thus-identified content may be transmitted over the network to a requesting consumer or other user thereof. It is straightforward and well-known to provide static network content to a consumer or other user in this manner.
Further in these contexts, enhanced conventional techniques have been developed which enable relatively faster, more flexible, and more customizable user experiences with respect to receipt of, and interaction with, network content. For example, in the example of the public internet, a website may be provided to a user which includes one or more portions which may be updated, interacted with, or otherwise modified independently of a remainder of the website in question. In this way, the user may modify only a selected portion of the website, without requiring the time and resources associated with updating the website in its entirety. For example, a website may be provided which provides financial news, and may be associated with a URL such as www.examplefinancialnews.com (intended merely for the sake of example and not intended to identify or reference an actual website). In the example, the website may provide a number of specific stock prices, which may be changing throughout the day, as well as current commentary thereon. Consequently, the website in question may have specifically-identified portions which are each devoted to a particular stock price. Thus, in the example, a user of the website may select one or more of the provided stock prices, and the website may update only those selected stock prices, without requiring an update of any other news or other information provided by the website. More specifically, for example, in response to a selection of a particular stock price by the user, a software function of the website in question may execute to send a request to a remote server for the desired stock price information, and may thereafter update only the relevant portion of the website using the received response. In other well known examples, such as, e.g., web based email accounts, internet search engines, social networking sites, and virtually any other types of network content, it is possible and often desirable to provide and utilize such techniques.
In practice, a typical user experience may be to proceed to a website (e.g., the fictional example website www.examplefinancialnews.com referenced above), either by directly entering the URL into a browser, or by selecting a link to the URL from a separate website. As just described, upon arriving at such a website, the user may make a selection therefrom which results in the type of partial update of the page just described. For example, the user may select a portion of the page which executes a software function to retrieve a current stock price for a selected stock, and to update only a corresponding portion of the page to display the thus-retrieved information. However, the software function which executes this partial update of the page may not, by itself, have any affect on the URL associated with the page as a whole. That is, even though the user in this example is effectively viewing a modified version of the webpage associated with the original URL, it may occur in the example that the originally-entered URL remains the same. Consequently, it may be difficult or impossible for the user in this example to share or otherwise provide a link to the modified version of the page that is actually being viewed by the user. For example, if the user were to copy and paste the URL of the modified webpage in this example (e.g., for providing to another user), then the recipient of the URL, upon selection thereof, would proceed not to the modified version of the webpage created when the original user selected a desired stock price for updating, but rather to the original webpage viewed by the user upon initial selection of the original URL.
In order to address these and related difficulties, techniques have been developed for modifying a URL of a webpage in conjunction with modifications (e.g., partial updates) of the underlying webpage. That is, in the example provided above, when such techniques are implemented with respect to the website in question, then a corollary effect of the selection of the desired stock price by the user is an update and/or modification of the associated URL. For example, the user may proceed to the original website www.examplefinancialnews.com, and, as above, may select a desired stock price for selective updating thereof. At a time of such updating, the techniques just referenced for making associated modifications to the URL may be implemented, so as to thereby obtain a modified URL which corresponds directly to the modified (e.g., partially updated) webpage. Consequently, the user may thereafter be enabled to provide the modified URL, e.g., to another user. As a result, the receiving user may thus be enabled to select the provided link and thereby proceed directly to the modified version of the webpage which the original user previously viewed, and intended for the receiving user to view, as well.
Techniques are known for providing a modified URL which corresponds directly to a modified webpage, where such techniques may leverage existing techniques used to create and generate URLs in other contexts. Specifically, for example, certain techniques for formulating such specialized URLs are known to rely on the use of so-called URL fragments, which refer to particularly designated character strings within a URL serving the particular function of, e.g., identifying a specific portion of a webpage within the webpage as a whole. For example, such particularly designated character strings within a URL may include a URL character string which is offset by, e.g., follows after, the pound sign (i.e., the symbol “#”). For example, it may occur that a fictional example website www.examplesportsnews.com is a particularly lengthy page and/or is divided into particular topical subsections (e.g., football, basketball, or various other sporting news). In such cases, one or more URL fragments may be used to enable a reader of the website to perform intra-site navigation. For example, it may occur that the user initially proceeds to the original URL, www.examplesportsnews.com, whereupon the user may view a list of identified subsections included therein, as just described. In the example, the user may wish to select a link to the subsection devoted to football. Upon selection of the corresponding link, the user may be directly provided with the subsection of the webpage which includes, or is devoted to, discussion of football. In such a case, according to conventional use of URL fragments, the user will be provided with the selected subsection, and the displayed URL within the browser will reflect the selected fragment, as well (and can therefore be provided to other users). For example, the updated URL may be displayed as, e.g., www.examplesportsnews.com#football. In similar, related examples, it may occur that the user initially views a separate website which contains a link to the football subsection. That is, the user may initially be viewing a website which contains a link that is identified as pointing directly to the football subsection of the fictional example website, and may therefore select the provided link in order to navigate directly thereto. In practice, in the example, as just described, the URL associated with the provided link may include the relevant URL fragment as described above. Therefore, in practice, upon selection of the link by the user, the browser of the user may obtain the fictional example sports news website in its entirety, and then may identify the included URL fragment as such to thereby proceed immediately to the identified football subsection for providing to the user within the browser.
Thus, it may understood from the above that, on the one hand, conventional techniques for providing selective or partial updates to a webpage through implementation of software functions which are capable of independently modifying such selected portions may provide the benefits of an increased loading speed of specifically desired information, as well as a generally more interactive user experience. On the other hand, such conventional technologies, by themselves, may suffer from the deficiency of failing to enable a direct linking to such partially updated and/or modified webpages. Meanwhile, conventional usage of URL fragments enable usage of modified URLs which point specifically to desired information within a larger website context. Subsequently, solutions have been implemented which leverage existing URL fragment techniques to enable direct linking to partially updated/modified webpages, i.e., to automatically generate modified URLs containing URL fragments which correspond directly to webpages which have been partially updated and/or modified. Specifically, for example, websites which are enabled with the ability to provided selective or partial updating and/or modifications thereof may further include software functionality for generating a modified URL containing a URL fragment for each such selective or partial updating and/or modification. As a result, a user may be provided with a modified URL which has a one-to-one correspondence with a modified webpage, so that the user may thereafter utilize such a modified URL to provide a direct link to the specific modified version of the webpage in question.
To give a specific example in the context of the examples provided above, it may occur that a user initially navigates to the fictional example website www.examplefinancialnews.com, and thereafter selects a particular stock, the selection of which has at least two separate but related affects. First, as described, the selection of the stock may cause execution of software functionality for dynamically retrieving a current price or other information about the stock, and thereafter updating the webpage to include the thus-retrieved current information, while leaving the remainder of the page intact. Second, at the same time, software functionality may be implemented which generates a modified URL containing a URL fragment which is uniquely related to, and identifies, the resulting, partially-modified webpage which includes the current stock information. Thus, the user's experience is to navigate to the fictional example website www.examplefinancialnews.com, select a desired stock for updating thereof, and thereafter view the modified version of the website containing the updated, current stock information, while simultaneously viewing an updated, modified URL containing a URL fragment, such as, e.g., www.examplefinancialnews.com#currentstockinformation. As also described, if the user thereafter provides the modified URL with the generated URL fragment (www.examplefinancialnews.com#currentstockinformation) to, e.g., a receiving user, then the receiving user, upon selection of the modified URL with the URL fragment, may be directly provided with the corresponding modified webpage which was viewed by the original user, and which the original user wished to share with the receiving user as such. More specifically, upon selection of the modified URL with the URL fragment by the receiving user, the browser of the receiving user may navigate to the www.examplefinancialnews.com website and simultaneously trigger execution of the software functionality which provides the relevant update and/or modifications thereto (e.g., the update of the stock information in question). As is known, as a relic (in this context) of conventional URL fragment technology, the browser of the receiving user also may attempt to jump to a portion of the website in question which corresponds to the included URL fragment; however, since no such identified portion actually exists within the modified webpage, the browser of the receiving user will take no action in this regard. Instead, as described, the receiving user will merely be provided with a webpage which corresponds to the updated and/or modified version thereof, which was originally viewed by the original user and which the original user desired to link to directly for the benefit of the receiving user.
In summary, the above-described techniques provided workable solutions for providing a net effect in which users are both provided with selectively and/or partially modifiable webpages (and associated benefit thereof), as well as an ability to provide direct links to such modified webpages (through the use of URL fragments). However, such solutions, although workable for the purposes and advantages just referenced, may be problematic at best for satisfying various other needs of at least some network users. For example, search engine providers and others seeking to catalogue, characterize, or otherwise analyze network content may use conventional technologies to crawl and/or index network content. For example, as is well known, various search engine providers may use, e.g., software agents and associated algorithms for crawling a plurality of websites, and may use associated indexing techniques in order to make the crawled content easily searchable by and for network users. However, the types of selectively and/or partially modified webpages (having corresponding modified URLs with URL fragments) may be difficult and/or impractical to index.
For example, it may be appreciated from the above discussion that conventional or original usages of URL fragments are essentially incompatible with conventional indexing techniques. Specifically, such conventional and/or original URL fragments, as described, merely point to a portion within a larger webpage. Consequently, it is generally inefficient, useless, or wasteful to provide indexing for such conventional and/or original URL fragments, because such indexing efforts would essentially be duplicative and redundant, particularly when indexing a plurality of conventional and/or original URL fragments associated with a single larger webpage. Consequently, for example, it may be common for indexing techniques to disregard URL fragments during indexing processes, and to proceed with indexing only the content of the underlying webpage. Conversely, as described, selectively and/or partially modified webpages which have been associated with a corresponding modified URL including a URL fragment, may, virtually by definition, include unique or otherwise useful information which may not be, or is not, included in the underlying webpage. Therefore, it may be valuable to index such unique or otherwise useful information with the selectively and/or partially modified webpages. As may be observed, however, the contrasting usages of URL fragments in these two different context is problematic or incompatible, because an indexing system which receives a modified URL which includes the URL fragment which corresponds to a selectively and/or partially modified website may proceed simply by removing the contained URL fragment, and thereafter indexing only the contents of the underlying, unmodified webpage. As a result, unique or otherwise useful information may fail to be indexed or otherwise made available or searchable in a convenient way over the network.
It is possible for website providers or other parties having appropriate access and administrative rights for selectively and/or partially modifiable webpages to make all modified versions and associated modified URLs containing URL fragments indexable and thus searchable using the network. For example, website providers may provide indexable versions of their selectively and/or partially modifiable website, which may then be indexed in a normal fashion. However, such techniques are generally burdensome at best for the website providers, and, moreover, introduce possibilities of inaccurate or incomplete indexing, such as in scenarios where the indexable version of a website provided by the website provider does not fully or accurately represent the included content. As a result, no adequate solution exists for providing indexing of selectively and/or partially modifiable websites which have in fact been modified and identified using a corresponding modified URL containing a URL fragment.